Red Dog

Pit bull fighters, shadowy ne’er-do-wells, and murder mark the second novel in Jason Miller’s wry, darkly atmospheric Slim in Little Egypt series.

On a sultry summer night in the southern Illinois coal country of Little Egypt, the self-described “redneck detective” and former coal miner known as Slim is called upon by Sheldon and A. Evan Cleaves, a deeply weird backwoods father-son duo hoping to locate a missing dog. Slim is accustomed to searching for people, not pets, but he needs the bread to fix a busted air conditioner. And, after all, it’s a missing pets case. What could go wrong?

Things go wrong. When the investigation soon leads to the Cleaveses’ redheaded pit bull and a dognapper with his head blown clean off, Slim, his brilliant daughter Anci, and their extended surrogate family are plunged into a deadly world of subterranean blood sport, wanton murder, and one-handed white supremacists . . . and all because Slim wanted to keep cool.

As bitingly funny as it is starkly violent, Red Dog takes readers on one hell of a ride through the darkest heart of rural America as it is today.